Easy to sense the trend in the drift of life,
Hard to compel one creature out of its course.
-- Tu Fu, "The Autumn Wastes," tr. A.C. Graham, Poems of the Late T'ang.
Another proud member of the irony-based community.
And therefore, reader, I myself am the subject of my book; it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain.
-- Montaigne, Essays, "To the Reader."
I shall see myself, I shall read myself, I shall go into ecstacies, and I shall ask -- Is it possible that I have so much esprit?
-- Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.
Observations may be shared here.